By Cappy Hall Rearick
Welcome to the Church of the Holy Cabbage. Lettuce pray. ~Author Unknown
I loved the sound of my mother’s voice. It was pure Southern, magnolia smooth. I heard it as she was wheeled into surgery. She told me not to worry, that she would be back. She was wrong about that.
One day last week while grocery shopping, I heard her voice again. She told me to buy brown sugar. As clearly as if she had been wheeling my buggy herself, she said, “Go over to aisle six and pick up some brown sugah.” When she wanted to, my mama could smooth out the end of a word and cradle it in mid-air for five minutes. Listening to her talk was akin to snoozing in a Pawley’s Island Hammock.
Right after the brown sugar episode, I heard her singing an Irish ballad one day while I was making up my bed. I remembered that song from my childhood — a sad tune. I used to go to bed with tears in my eyes after she sang it to me. But last week, when I heard the familiar soprano melody drifting throughout the house like elevator music, oddly enough, I didn’t feel sad. It felt like slipping my feet into a pair of old Weejuns.
Cooking supper that same night, (chicken and dressing, butterbeans, rice and sliced tomatoes), I heard her voice again. She told me to put more sage in the dressing. So! We were back to the Seasoning War, were we? Too many cooks in the kitchen, blah, blah, blah.
The next day while driving to Asheville, she broke into the Oldies But Goodies on the radio.
“Turn around and go home.” The voice said it as if asking me for a second helping of that cornbread dressing (the one that needed a touch more sage).
Up to that point, I had not responded to this odd communication from my mother. After all, she had been dead for over thirty years and besides, I never talked back to her even when she was alive. But the idea that I should deep-six my shopping trip based on a voice only I could hear? Well … that wasn’t going to happen.
For the rest of the ride, her voice Xeroxed itself in my ears. Go back home! Go back home! Go back home! By the time I got to the mall my head was splitting from the pounding in my eardrums.
Glancing in the car mirror, I saw that I was turning green around the gills, so I decided to forget shopping and go back home. The thought of wrapping up in a blanket cocoon in my own little nest felt right, so I left the mall and headed home without one single purchase.
I boogied down I-26 thinking Ibuprofen thoughts washed down with a dry martini when Mama’s voice suddenly blurted out again. “Slow Down!”
Since I was going over eighty, I said, “Yes ma’am.” But my headache did not slow down when the car did. Can’t win ‘em all.
I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them, I saw an overturned eighteen-wheeler only a nanosecond in front of me. I braked as fast as I could and was barely able to avoid broadsiding a truck full of iceberg lettuce.
I watched in horror as hundreds of small green heads rolled off the truck and down I-26, bouncing onto unsuspecting cars. Grateful that my aching head was still attached, I gulped air (lots of it) while my heart did a 1950’s shag step.
Back home, I grabbed a soft blanket and snuggled down in a fetal position. Could Guardian Angles be real? Was Mama my personal G.A.? Had she just saved me from becoming an Interstate Tossed Salad?
So now, any time I hear her voice, I listen up. My personal G.A. might be giving me winning lottery numbers. Even angels know that writers don’t earn squat.
